Names That We Bear
by HeiszKetchup
Summary: Words do not fit Ruby Rose; descriptions do not match the crimson girl, common categories failing to accommodate her. She is an enigma that defies descriptions, that takes her own characteristics from many, many tropes, amalgamating them into the persona she wears.


Words do not fit Ruby Rose; descriptions do not match the crimson girl, common categories failing to accommodate her. Labels fit those around her like gloves, snug and tight-fitting – on her they are more like mittens, loose and formless. Those who try to put words to the girl catch a glimpse of her and no more; their words describe a single star in the constellation that is Ruby Rose, a single piece to the puzzle. She is an enigma that defies descriptions, that takes her own characteristics from many, many tropes, amalgamating them into the persona she wears.

Words do not fit the girl of crimson, though they have tried to from the start – there isn't a time in her life when people weren't trying to categorize her, make her fit into the neat little boxes they had prescribed for acquaintances and family alike. But she didn't fit into any of the packages, always breaking free from them in some way, like a colouring sheet that has scribbles drifting beyond the containing lines. Her colours are red and black and grey, vibrancy mixing into dull shades – perhaps the only thing about Ruby that can truly be categorized is her colour scheme.

But people do not understand that about Ruby; instead, they continue to assign her labels she shakes off as she grows, ever changing, ever unpredictable. The roles she is given she does not follow, but instead inverts them, destroying the stereotypes and tropes that are thrown her way. She has done so from the start – from Beacon and backwards, she has never fit the labels, ever since she was small.

Ruby, they call her at first, the daughter of Summer, the daughter of the second wife, the second child to Taiyang. They look on her with pity, with kindess, with disgust. The stories that swirl around Summer are whisked away with the movements of her cloak, held across proud shoulders that do not let rumours and gossip weigh upon them. The stories that cascade off of Summer's back land upon her daughter, instead; where they cannot affect the mother, they can affect the child, and Ruby grows up under glances that change from acceptance to abhorrence and back again.

Ruby, she is called, the girl who comes from a second love, a second marriage. But Ruby knows none of this, far too young to understand the fickle judgments of the adults around her, far too young to care. The older children learn from their parents, learn that the little girl with silver eyes and dark hair is a product of a rebound, or so the rumours say, and try to treat her as such. Their words are cruel, but they do not find purchase in Ruby's heart; the flames of her older sister's protection burn them away into ashes, scorch marks all that remain of the harsh comments.

Yang is old enough to understand the words and their meanings, just old enough to know what the adults say, and has been reprimanded many times over for speaking out against them, a girl not yet even in school already chastising the adults that dare to speak ill of her sister, of Summer. The reprimands fall on deaf ears, and both Taiyang and Summer ignore the requests sent their way to teach their daughter better; to them, she has already learnt well. Yang knows of the relation to her sister, the half of the blood they share and the half that keeps them apart, and lets none of it interfere with her love for the younger girl; she is not petty like the rest, and knows that bonds do not require blood to be strong.

And so Ruby grows older with her sister's protection, the cruel words by adults and children alike kept from every sullying her innocence, her shoulders bearing no weight from the rumours. She grows up happy in the love of her family, and the trope of the kin of a second marriage, the unhappy and scorned child, fades away into dust, blown away like the ashes Yang leaves behind.

She falls in love with the fairy tales her mother reads, her wide silver eyes showing her reactions to the well known words, read from pages that have been turned over and over again. She grows up believing in the brave, the just, the honest, and swears her loyalty to the heroes that defend the world from the darkness. She is not told it is childish to dream, and she lets her heart thrive on the stories of love and valour, believing in the characters with her entire being. Ruby, she is called by all, the girl in love with fairy tales – and there the names split, falling into the supportive and the cynical; Ruby, the girl who looks up to heroes; Ruby, the girl who believes in fantasy.

Then Summer is gone, and what they call her changes again; Ruby, they say softly, the girl without a mother, the girl without a true father. The remnants of her former life are brushed away in sweeps of a brush, repainting the scenery in her life – her home grows cold and empty, her family suddenly much smaller, and broken. She is still young, but she is not young enough that she does not understand that her mother is gone; where she is now, Ruby does not know, but she gathers, through whispers around her, that she will not return.

Taiyang retreats into a former shell of himself, and even Yang, unbreakable Yang, seems lost for a while. All that remains of the mother she loves is the red cloak, a handmade gift for a previous birthday, and Ruby treasures it to the bitter end. She watches as her family breaks down, listens as the people in the town speak softly around her, as thought they are afraid that their words will shatter the girl if spoken too loudly. But Ruby is not as fragile as they believe; she has a mother who may not return, but she also has the courage she inherited from the woman, and she refuses to let it go to waste.

So she laughs as much as she can, and the world around her seems astonished, as though they had never foreseen the possibility of her overcoming her grief – Taiyang still hides away in the corners of empty rooms, and Yang freezes whenever the word "mother" is spoken around her, but Ruby laughs. She laughs because even if the pain and sadness threaten to overcome her soul, she is Summer's daughter, and though she still does not entirely understand where her mother has gone, she decides she will never let her mother be remembered in only tears and whispered sympathy. She takes strength from the heroes in the stories her mother read to her, and bears her shoulders to the weight of the world.

The girl who laughs after her mother is gone becomes well known in the town, and seems to shake Yang from her stupor – she speaks more, her smile and laugh bright again – but to Ruby, her sister's smile is too bright, far too saturated, a poor sham in place of the sun. But she lets Yang smile too brightly anyways, until the elder sister nearly gets them killed, and the whispers around her change once more.

Ruby and her sister, the people say, the poor girls whose father nearly let them die. Ruby doesn't like the rumours, doesn't like the fact they speak about their father as if they understand his grief, but she doesn't like the way her sister does not deny the gossip even more. But Qrow arrives and chases away the words that follow them home, piling up upon their stoop like unwelcome visitors, waiting to be let in. He isn't there for long, staying long enough to revive Taiyang and remind him that he has two daughters who still need him, long enough to tell Yang enough about her own mother to keep her from ever following the demons of the past, looking for answers, again.

Then Qrow is gone, staying only briefly, enough to put the spark back into the souls of the family, the souls of the two people who need it most, the daughter and the father with embers in their hearts. He stays only long enough to return the light and the warmth to the home – to Ruby, this makes perfect sense, because to her Qrow is the darkness, and like the darkness, he only lingers until the light returns.

Yang returns as the sister Ruby knows so well, her smile less intense, no longer painfully bright – and she fills in the shoes of the mother she knows Ruby needs, without the younger girl ever really catching on. The rumours of Taiyang's failure as a father fade from their lives, the man slowly returning to his family, Yang still filling in the duties that he cannot. The former labels return – Ruby, the girl without a mother, but she does not heed them, does not give them any notice.

She does not have a mother by blood, but one by love – she has a sister who looks after her in place of Summer, and Ruby grows up under Yang's guidance and care, growing strong in spite of the titles that the town knows her by. Yang does her best to light up the darkness that spread with Summer's passing, she illuminates all but a few corners in Ruby's life, and the younger girl does not mind, well accustomed to the dark shadows that have been a part of her for so long. Yang does her best, but a sister is not a mother, and Ruby will always have parts of her life that lack what is hers by birthright – but she grows up without them anyways, never yearning for the things she could have had, instead being grateful for what she can still call her own.

Time passes as the years grow by, and Ruby is the girl without a mother, but she does not fit the patterns they expect – she does not grow into a delinquent, she knows respect and manners and grace, her only vice can be found in the awkwardness that colours her words, though that can be attributed to the factor of adolescence more than anything else.

They still call her Ruby, the girl without a mother, but she does not care – the children in the town learn of her as the sad trope, the pitied daughter, and treat her some days as a target for sympathy, other days as an outcast. The child of a second marriage whose mother has gone to her grave is known throughout her hometown, but Ruby grows in spite of the titles she bears, a heavy cross that she carries without complaint.

The years grow by, Ruby entering the teenage years, and by this point the other kids laugh at her behind her back, pointing fingers and calling names when Yang is not around to fend them off. Children are cruel, as they learn from the gossip and whispers that adults share above their heads, believing that they are too young to take anything away from the words – and their cruelty chooses a target to single from the crowd, manifests itself as weapons of teasing and exclusion, swords pointed towards a back cloaked in red.

But Ruby has grown strong in the cloth armour her mother left behind, and does not need Yang to fend off the bullies, as the world around her believes – she lets her sister protect her, lets Yang feel like she is succeeding in her role as a guardian, literally and figuratively, but stands on her own just as well. The children call her names and tease her, but she stands proud and refuses to bow her head to the weights they hang around her neck. She shoulders the name of outcast, of the excluded, but does not let it define her, her life moving forwards in spite of the fingers that point in her direction.

Qrow returns when she is in her teens, offering a chance to teach her the art of violence, the quiet fierceness that can be found in the blade he wields. They go through a range of weapons; swords and shields do not stick, hammers and maces not suited for her to bear. She dons gauntlets like her sister's, and finds the weight too heavy to bear, the metal hands not suited for her lithe frame.

But the scythe she lifts with ease, as though her hands have been destined for it from the start – and Qrow believes they might have been, the girl even more of a prodigy than he was at her age. Ruby swings the blade naturally, as though she has handled the weight her entire life – and unbeknownst to her uncle, she has borne labels heavier than the scythe for years, and has grown strong beneath them.

She trains and trains, and her body grows strong, cords of muscle growing lean and tight beneath skin that is scored from mishaps with the blade. The children grow to fear her, the girl with the scythe becoming an object of dread and danger. The adults whisper about her once more, about the girl with a weapon unfit for a lady's hands; the crueller ones liken her to the very reapers that took away her mother – Ruby, the girl who does not bow down to death, but embraces it instead.

They speak of her in whispers behind her back as she grows, as the passing days leave less and less scars on the shoulders that swing the scythe. She is quiet as she learns, and studious in her work; people do not see her often, but the few appearances bring rumours to her name; Ruby, the reaper. The children grow to fear her name; she grows without confronting it.

When the scythe is as familiar as an extra limb, Qrow with nothing left to teach her, Ruby faces the names once more; she is older, she is stronger – the adolescent awkwardness still remains, but it is clear that it is a part of her personality, and to judge it is to be petty. She walks with purpose in the streets, and though she still grows taller, she has an aura about her, one that sends people shying away from her shadow. There is something ominous about a girl who carries a reaper's blade, and the rumours fly freely, and they fear the trope they place upon her.

And as she has done so with every name in the past, Ruby inverts it, takes the stereotype and defies it in every way possible. She is the girl who bears a symbol of death on her back, and she speaks kindly to the younger children in the village, and bears the same gentle soul her mother had before her. She is generous and kind, and where seeds of hatred were sewn only flowers of forgiveness bloom, unexpected and unyielding. She shares her time and stories with those around her, and the pride from Yang is immeasurable, the girl who was looked down on for so long finally rising into her own right.

Ruby is everything she is never expected to be, and her personality contrasts with the blade upon her back, but the children learn not to fear it, instead to ask about it, small timid questions addressed to the young teenager. She is still a child in many ways, but Ruby has borne titles her entire life, and she rises above them, reading stories of heroism and loyalty, as the weight of her weapon rests across her back.

Her name changes once more, the reaper titles gone, washed away by her very personality – one cannot label the title of death on a girl who thrives, brims at the edges with life. Ruby, they call her, the girl with the scythe, the girl of fairy tales and hope. Ruby, they say, the girl who grew up against the world. They do not admit that the world was forced upon her by their own words, and she does not ask them to acknowledge it; long ago she stopped caring of how they spoke of her. They call her a prodigy, an inspiration, and forget all too easily of the scorn they once said her name with.

Ruby grows into the spitting image of her mother, and the voices speak of it fondly, sadly, as though they gave a damn back when Summer was alive; she dyes her hair red in an act of rebellion against the words with Yang's help, and that is all she does in the name of uprising, all she allows herself to take. She does not need to fight the demons that dwell in the rumours whispered over fences; she ignores them, and lives her life without qualms. She continues to grow into Summer, but the red streaks in her hair quiet the rumours, make her into her own person, not the remnants of the dead.

When she lives up to the heroism imbued in the tales she grew up loving, stopping Torchwick's men and being accepted into Beacon alongside Yang, the very voices that once despised her now speak her name with pride, and she humbly accepts their words, but does not take them to mean anything. They have spoken ill of every family member she has, and she does not forget the fact, even though she forgives it.

Ruby, they call her, the girl loved by Patch. And she takes the name but does not agree with it; Patch does not love her, it loves the underdog, and had she fallen to the rumours that sought to squash her beneath them, they would have found another's name to cry instead. She lays the title on her shoulders like a sash she has grown fond of bearing; one riddled with badges that are meaningless beyond appearance, stitched into her very soul.

Ruby has grown up with names hung around her head like an executioner's noose; she has lived her life making sure never to fall, never to slip over the edge. She has borne the crown of thorns they placed upon her, letting the blood dry on the sides of her face, refusing to wipe it away, to forget it forever. She bears the injuries they laid upon her with a warped sense of pride, the very evidence that she has fought back the demons, she has made her way through damnation, and she is still going. She was given a cross too large for a child to bear, but she carried it anyways, and never lay it down.

Ruby is made of the titles she tore to shreds, the stereotypes she subverted. She does not fit into the boxes so many attempt to shove her within; she stands proud and strong, taking strength from the sister who raised her and the childhood stories that laid the foundations of her soul. She believes in heroics, in loyalty and bravery and honour, lies her trust in honesty and justice. She does not bow to the weight on her shoulders; she carries it with pride.

She grows, and will continue to walk with the purpose she gained long ago. She has gone from the pitied to the scorned, from the feared to the revered. She has broken apart the categories they tried to imprison her within, and she will never stop doing so, never stop carrying the burden she does not rightfully bear.

She is a girl of crimson and grays, of ash and blood, of fear and love. She is both the monsters and the heroes in the stories, and her colours are sung in the fabrics she drapes across her shoulders, the cloak that has shown years of endurance.

She shakes off the titles, forgives those who drape them over her. She is the girl who has risen above, who leaves behind the brands of the names they try and burn into her skin. She is Ruby, and she is unbreakable.


End file.
